particularly in favor of eradicating coyotes, but really moral culpability has nothing to do with it. I don't blame the smallpox virus for doing what came naturally to it, but I'm happy to see it eradicated just the same.

I always think its funny when people are shocked by this. Shows how little folks are aware of their IRL surroundings. Notice the bunny boom in the Boston area in the last 5 years? That means the coyotes are right behind 'em. Rabbits will be gone in another year or two and the packs move on....
♪the circle of liiiiife♪

Our indoor cat became an outdoor cat for about 2 hours the other night. As the family scoured the neighbor's backyards with flashlights and cell phones, each of us encountered one or more rabbits just hanging out in other people's yards. They didn't even run away.

We got rid of the Eastern Wolves, which were indigenous, and then over time Western Coyotes migrated in to fill that ecosystem slot, hybridizing with dogs and wolves as they did so.

So we've ended up with coyotes that are larger and more aggressive than their progenitors out west, and are also less averse to human interaction than the wolves that were here originally. (They're still quite a bit smaller than non-hybridized wolves though, so at least there's that).

Maybe we should figure out just how important/persistent that predator slot is, and if it turns out to be something that overall serves the environmental health of the region, we should see if we can come up with a way to fill it with the smaller, more cowardly version of coyotes found out west.

I have lived in the same house for 35 years. Before the coyotes moved into the forest across the street we were not overrun with mice, possums, raccoons, or rabbits. Never saw a rat, saw the cyclical population of squirrels, saw the occasional deer - population also cyclical. You Eastern city folk need to stop romanticizing the coyote. They are not part of the traditional New England ecosystem.

I had heard about the ubiquity of mammal and insect pests from naturalists numerous times. I recall in my master-gardener classes that lecturers from UMASS shocked the snoots. A few students from Wellesley and Brookline proclaimed that the likes of rats were big-city and poor-person problem in places like Boston, Worcester and Lawrence.

The lecturers snorted. They cited figures of populations in rich towns. Their presence is what the integrated pest management folk call "the night shift." Your not noticing mice, rats, voles and the like does not mean they aren't feeding around and maybe in your house. Cats, coyotes, and raptors manage to chow down on them.

We have come across a few moles (mostly stupid, slow and very flat in driveways). On the other hand, in the decades we lived in JP, we found voles everywhere.

These tiny, very dark, mouse-like critters (murine for the precise types), voles sported in afternoon well into night throughout the yards. Most people weren't about and didn't notice them. Our Maine coon cat sure did. He cruelly considered them his favorite toys. He'd swat 'em, toss 'em in the air and otherwise have a grand time. He didn't seem to consider them food. Eventually, he'd kill the latest vole. If a cat can look disappointed, he sure did. We couldn't dissuade him.

My Maine Coon cat has a thing for rabbits. She enthusiastically pursues them, is large and strong enough to catch them, and we often find nothing but unlucky rabbit's feet (and a bloated snoring cat indoors) in the aftermath. She doesn't play with them at least.

I scolded her for this once, but she then insisted that I follow her out to my garden. There were signs of struggle. How can I complain?

I have the only garden in the neighborhood that survived rabbit munching last summer. Here I thought that I grow a garden so that I can have food for me. She thinks I have a garden to attract food for her.

I live next to a woodland in a fairly densely populated area and have seem marked changes in the number and mix of critters over twenty years. Deer sleep in my yard in winter, turkeys and rabbits are most out of control these days.

You must be new to hunting if you aren't aware of game abundance around you. As a rural and then exurban westerner, I grew up on game shot by members of my family, including me... but thanks for playing.

.... to attempt something like this.
Probably not rabid. However, stopping the spread of rabies is something we have needed to spend more money on for a long time. There are effective methods used elsewhere that have proven to work that protect wildlife as well as us and our pets. Time to get with the program.

To answer the OP, I don't know what we do to prevent or reduce this type of attack, but surely it's not "easy." When a small child is attacked, are you going to hop on UHub to remind parents not to become too attached to their children until the onset of puberty?

I am responding to the comment (perhaps glibly made) that a solution to this problem is to care less about the target of coyote attacks.

I am pointing out that children have been and can reasonably expected to continue to be the target of coyote attacks. I hope that consideration of this will demonstrate the shortcomings of the proposed principle.

I am not claiming that coyotes pose a large threat to children, either in absolute numbers or as a percentage of their attacks. Because my statement is not about the relative threats children face, your "counterpoints" about dog attacks and motor vehicle "attacks" are irrelevant.

I am not proposing any particular controls on the coyote population "because of the children."

There's plenty that can be done to prevent this, it starts with educating yourself about coyotes.

The article said the victim had encountered coyotes previously. Now we can get the word out that coyote might come after you. So when your walking your dog, don't brisk past any coyotes if you see them, get outta there.

Fun Fact: Coyotes usually don't enter the city or if they do, they don't stay very far away from an escape route (thick trees, a ravine etc...)You aren't likely to get coyote attacked at Downtown Crossing. I know it's not always feasible, but if you have a small dog, and you live near woods, and you know there's coyotes there, stick to busy streets and areas with a lot of buildings and foot traffic.

As for tides and winter, we can educate ourselves about that too. I don't just step outside into a blizzard wearing shorts and flip flops because there's nothing that can be done.

I am a Quincy resident. In the past month I've noticed a lone coyote walking after sundown somewhat nearby in the vicinity of Furnace Brook Parkway near Reardon. I assumed the coyote lived in the woods of Saint Mary's Cemetery. Granite Links is not faraway but it requires crossing the expressway. That's hard to imagine!

Up on Fairmount Hill in HP, several neighbors refer to Summit Street as Coyote Alley. I've seen moms hunting with two or more of her offspring, but usually more like March than now.

I'm surprised by the attack too. Normally our coyotes like to pick up a rabbit or cat or such, something small enough to carry home to the den. I had to wonder whether Matilda was brave and tried to intimidate toe coyotes to protect her and her human chum..

The "Eastern Coyote" is a Western Coyote hybridized with dogs and wolves. Larger, and they do form packs, instead of being solely solitary.

Heckin' cute, too, but as another result of that hybridization they are more likely to come into conflict with humans and their pets.

Stories like this one I mostly chalk up to being the price we pay for being even slightly close to nature. Yeah, if there are some problem individuals, we can transport or kill those, but you can't avoid all such encounters.

I've seen mostly solitaries over the years, but in the last ten years there have been occasional AWOOO festivals nearby of a full moon. Like last night. Very eerie sounds - definitely not something you would expect to hear in an inner suburban neighborhood!

Then came the large increase in the number of deer.

Then they started organizing to take down the deer.

I suspect that coyotes were sufficiently successful at taking deer to have a population rise ... and now there seem to be fewer deer, so they are using their teamwork skillz for other prey that is too large to snack alone. I also have to wonder if the extreme early winter weather has something to do with their shift in venue.

My neighbor is a big coyote booster. He's also kind of casual about letting his Jack Russell Terrierist loose without a leash to run off into the woods. Two weeks ago he warned people that the Coyotes got one of their pack to lure the dumb dog into chasing it, and that two others were closing in when he went out blowing an air horn to run them all off. The terrierist doesn't like the leash, but, hey, lesson learned for the human.

Yep, I walk my dog (off leash) in Wompatuck all the time. During the winter, there are deer kills around there occasionally. I've come across a few gnawed out carcasses. Just waiting for the game population to get low enough for a coyote to snatch somebody's dog.